The present invention relates to a method and/or an apparatus of securing an application, and more particularly to an individual identification apparatus.
An optical pattern recognition technique can be applied, for example, to an individual secured device. The individual secured device is provided for identifying a person under investigation with a specific individual on record. The person under investigation will be referred to as an arbitrary person, hereinafter. The individual secured device generally detects a portion of the body of the arbitrary person. For example, an optical fingerprint identification apparatus has been proposed for detecting fingerprints of the arbitrary person and the specific person.
An optical fingerprint identification secured device has been developed for detecting ending or bifurcation points of ridge lines (i.e. minutiae) of a fingerprint of a specific person and of a fingerprint of an arbitrary person. More specifically, this device detects positions of ending or bifurcation points of the ridge lines, as a match or a mismatch, the fingerprints of the arbitrary person and the specific person. This device is known for being capable of high precision identification. However, this apparatus is disadvantageous in that extracting the characteristics of the minutiae requires a great amount of time, and also, the apparatus has a large scale.
Conventionally, in order to gain access to the secured device, the individual person is requested to submit all his fingers for fingerprint recognition by the device. The device might comprise an integral Charge-Coupled Imaging Device (CCD), and a light source coupled with data encoder, decoder and other exemplary processing circuitry for capturing the fingerprints. Charge-Coupled Imaging Devices are well known in the art and generally include an MOS capacitor with an electrode attached on top of silicon dioxide on a semiconductor substrate surface. When voltage is applied between the electrode and the substrate, a depletion layer is formed at the silicon dioxide and the semiconductor interface, resulting in a potential well of low energy ranking of the minority carrier. If the signal charge generated by light radiation is injected into this potential well, the signals are temporarily stored and memorized as analog qualities.
In general, the CCD elements are arranged in a matrix comprising a light sensitive CCD device upon which an image of a fingerprint is projected. Each individual fingerprint signature signal will be analyzed and processed as hereinafter explained. The CCD array operates as an analog shift register to obtain and transfer out pixels of information defining the fingerprint signature projected thereon. It is noted that many other sensing arrangements may be substituted for the CCD device shown herein to provide a fingerprint xe2x80x9csignaturexe2x80x9d for comparison with approved fingerprints signatures.
Another method of achieving high accuracy of identifying an arbitrary person is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,719,950, issued to Osten et al. (hereinafter xe2x80x9cOstenxe2x80x9d). Osten discloses a biometric authentication system employing a combination of fingerprints and at least one non-specific biometric parameter of a physiological characteristic recognized and compared with physiological norms. The non-specific biometric parameter is used as a second security parameter for ensuring that the arbitrary individual is not incapacitated, dismembered, or deceased. However, this method is very complex in design and requires additional sensors and logic circuit to control the logic. Thus, it tremendously increases the costs of the system.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to overcome the above-described drawbacks, and to provide a secured device which can have high tolerance in regards to the quality of the images of the body portions of the arbitrary person and the specific person, and also can perform quick and easy identification of individuals.
It is another object to provide a highly secure system employing relatively low resolution fingerprint recognition components.
The present invention discloses a security access method and/or device. The security access method verifies both the intended user""s fingerprints and the fingerprint entering sequence to determine whether an access should be authorized. By using both the fingerprints and the entering sequence as the access criteria, a highly secured device can be created using low cost commercially available components.
These and other objects and features of the invention will be better understood by reference to the detailed description which follows taken together with the drawings in which like elements are referred to by like designations throughout the several views.